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History United States of America
' History of the United States' The history of the United States as covered in American schools and universities typically begins with either Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage to the Americas or with the prehistory of the Native peoples; the latter approach has become increasingly common in recent decades. Indigenous peoples lived in what is now the United States for thousands of years and developed complex cultures before European colonists began to arrive, mostly from England, after 1600. The Spanish had early settlements in Florida and the Southwest, and the French along the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With large-scale military and financial support from France and military leadership by General George Washington, the American Patriots won the Revolutionary War. The peace treaty of 1783 gave the new nation most of the land east of the Mississippi River. The national government established by the Articles of Confederation proved ineffectual at providing stability to the new nation, as it had no authority to collect taxes and had noexecutive. A convention called in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation instead resulted in the writing of a new Constitution, which was adopted in 1789. In 1791 a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee rights that justified the Revolution. With George Washington as the nation's first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief political and financial adviser, a strong national government was created. Driven by the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the nation expanded beyond the Louisiana purchase, all the way to California and Oregon. The expansion was driven by a quest for inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners. This expansion was controversial and fueled the unresolved differences between the North and South over the institution of slavery in new territories. Slavery was abolished in all states north of the Mason–Dixon line by 1804, but the South continued to profit off the institution, producing high value cotton exports to feed increasing high demand in Europe. The 1860 presidential election of anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln triggered the secession of seven (later eleven) slave states to found the Confederacy in 1861. The American Civil War American Civil Wa r (1861-1865) ensued, with the overwhelming material and manpower advantages of the North decisive in a long war, as Britain and France remained neutral. The result was restoration of the Union, the impoverishment of the South, and the abolition of slavery. In the Reconstruction era (1863–77) legal and voting rights were extended to the Freedmen (freed slaves). The national government emerged much stronger, and because of the Fourteenth Amendment, it gained the explicit duty to protect individual rights. However, legal segregation and Jim Crow laws left blacks as second class citizens in the South with little power until the 1960s. The United States became the world's leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the North and Midwest, and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers from Europe. The national railroad network was completed with the work of Chinese immigrants, and large-scale mining and factories industrialized the Northeast and Midwest. Mass dissatisfaction with corruption, inefficiency and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement, from the 1890s to 1920s, which led to many social and political reforms. In 1920 the 19th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed women's suffrage (right to vote). This followed the 16th and 17th amendments in 1909 and 1912, which established the first national income tax and direct election of U.S. senators to Congress. Initially neutral in World War I, the U.S. declared war on Germany in 1917, and funded the Allied victory the following year. After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the Wall Street Crash of 1929marked the onset of the decade-long world-wide Great Depression. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Republican dominance of the White House and implemented his New Deal programs for relief, recovery, and reform. They defined modern American liberalism. These included relief for the unemployed, support for farmers, Social Security and a minimum wage. After the Japaneseattack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II alongside the Allies especially Britain and the Soviet Union. It financed the Allied war effort and helped defeatNazi Germany in Europe and, with the detonation of newly invented atomic bombs, Japan in the Far East. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers after World War II. Around 1947 they began the Cold War, confronting one another indirectly in the arms race and Space Race. U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the support of Western Europe and Japan, and the policy of "containment" or stopping the spread of Communism. The U.S. became involved in wars in Korea and Vietnam to stop the spread. In the 1960s, especially due to the strength of the civil rights movement, another wave of social reforms were enacted during the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson, enforcing the constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement to African Americans and other minorities. Native American activism also rose. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States the world's only superpower. As the 21st centur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks y began, international conflict centered around the Middle Eastand spread to Asia and Africa following the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaeda on the United States. In 2008 the United States had its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, which has been followed by slower than usual rates of economic growth during the 2010s.